The evolutionary neurological foundations of religious experience are detailed. Human beings have been burying and preparing their dead for the Hereafter for more than 100,000 years. These behaviors and beliefs are related to activation of the amygdala, hippocampus, and temporal lobe, which are responsible for religious, spiritual, and mystical trancelike states, dreaming, astral projection,...
Ketamine is a dissociative anesthetic with an accepted place in human medicine. Ketamine also has psychedelic properties, and there has been a recent increase in nonmedical use linked with the growth of the "dance culture." This has attracted little comment in the formal literature but has been the subject of many reports in the media. Myths and misunderstandings are common. The psychedelic...
Most people who have a near-death experience (NDE) say that the experience convinced them that they will survive death. People who have not had such an experience, however, may not share this conviction. Although all features of NDEs, when looked at alone, might be explained in ways other than survival, there are three features in particular that we believe suggest the possibility of survival,...
How does the mind experience the sacred? What biological mechanisms are involved in mystical states and trances? Is there a neurological basis for patterns in comparative religions? Does religion have an evolutionary function? This pathbreaking work by two leading medical researchers explores the neurophysiology of religious experience. Building on an explanation of the basic structure of the...
In this article I have attempted to draw connections between the near-death experience, biblical spirituality, and the ministry of the spiritual caregiver. Also, I have described the near-death phenomena and given particular emphasis to the dying and death processes, including the offering of guidelines for approaching death. In my ministry and studies, I have come to believe that the...
Article attempting to show that the sequence of a typical near-death experience (NDE) is predictable and reproducible, enough to suggest that the NDE is a symptom of a specific altered mental state seen in a large number of medical and surgical conditions.
Contributors Acknowledgments I. Conceptual and Methodological Considerations Introduction: Anomalous Experiences in Perspective, Etzel Cardena, Steven Jay Lynn, and Stanley Krippner Researching States of Consciousness and Anomalous Experiences, Etzel Cardena and Ronald J. Pekala Anomalous Experiences, Peculiarity, and Psychopathology, John G. Kerns, Nicole Karcher, Chitra Raghavan, and Howard...
I present a projective geometry for out-of-body “separation experiences,” built up out of a series of higher space analogies and resulting diagrams. The model draws upon recent understandings of cosmic symmetries linking relativity theory to quantum physics. This perspective is grounded inside a more general hyperspace theory, supposing that our three dimensional space is embedded within a...
Veridical evidence of a physically transcendent source of consciousness comes from both extremes of the life span when central nervous system functioning is compromised, suggesting that some form of personhood can exist independently of known cellular processes associated with the body. In pre- and perinatal accounts, veridical memories have surfaced of events in the first two trimesters, long...